"A good one, hmmm? There are less and less 'good' films or plays."
"But Dad, why can't we believe that you'll get well and you'll live right and you can help people live that way?"
"No, I have just been holding on to say goodbye and to ask you to forgive me one more time for everything, and to ask you to deal with unresolved obligations I'm leaving behind. You see, you're not supposed to die with indebtedness. If I had only known this all before, I would have undertaken to teach it to others."
"What would you have taught? Like going to the theater is bad?"
"No, that we have all come here to develop our souls. Egotism is the cause of our ills and the reason we don't focus our lives around love. My son, this is the work you must do."
"Maybe that is not my special purpose in life. You said everyone had his own path to take."
"This activity, developing your inner soul, is higher than any purpose an individual may have. It's the main purpose of every living being. Though our lives are short, we can achieve very much."
I didn't know what to say, much less to do.
My father was so concerned about his debts: return a book to someone, 2,000 rubles to a neighbor He asked a priest to come and read him his last rites and for Arthur to give as an offering whatever remuneration he would name (very unusual for those times).
At three in the afternoon, his father began to look attentively at an icon which hung above the entrance to his room (Some elderly women had recently hung them in rooms of the critically ill.). He repeated something to himself a few times and in about a quarter hour he took a deep breath and left us. 'Left' was the right word, Arthur knew, not died; he could feel it. A sense of peace accompanied his father's passing; a pleasant smile was left on his face.
In a kind of daze, Arthur reminded himself of his duties: funeral, priest, reparation of debts, returning to Moscow.
* * *Arthur's mother had been visiting her parents in the Far East. They had not been able to get through to her until a raging thunderstorm there had finally settled down and so she hadn't been able to return until a few days after the funeral.
She had a lot of friends and relatives in the city who gave her their support. A year and a half later she married a great guy and, with every passing year, Arthur talked with her less and less. Somewhere he remembered reading that the greater the love was between spouses, the sooner they were able to find new partners. Ties to his relatives now held him less than ever from the life which he wanted to lead.
This event with his father forced Arthur to reflect. His father had been relatively young (under 50) yet nevertheless, suddenly he had gone. The question of the meaning of life arose again. "After all, everything is temporal," he thought. "You can't make sense out of the continuing fuss and bustle of life." What's more, he started to be afraid of death. He understood that he would die one day, too, and maybe he only had one, two, or three years. Nobody knows.
A few months before, a young man, his neighbor, was hit by a car, and he died on the spot. And now, Arthur's father, who had been so young. He used to think he would die when he was from 80 to 100, but now he realized that it could be considerably earlier. He felt acutely aware of his questions about the meaning of life.
After his father's funeral, he read books for a few weeks, walked around alone in natural areas. He didn't know at the time that each day was bringing him closer to a meeting which would categorically change his life. His father's words before his death, the book about some supposed life after death these had a strong influence on him. But he just wasn't getting a unified, complete picture of what the world was and he had now lost all interest in it.
One day a friend from his student days called and invited him to live at their weekend home. His parents were travelling abroad and they needed someone to house-sit water the plants and so on. Arthur agreed. He wanted to be alone. It had been a month since his father's death. He drove over to his friend's place to get the keys and the next morning he was ready to go.
Chapter V
An Encounter with Zheka, the 'Holy Father'
The next day, Arthur left his apartment early to buy groceries and deal with some things. Hardly had he gotten out the door when he heard the church bells ringing. At the beginning of the 90s, this was a new, unusual occurrence in Moscow, one to which Muscovites hadn't quite adjusted. He remembered that not far from him was a church that was opened a few years ago, and which now had a large, active membership.
Apparently there was some kind of festival the closer Arthur got, the larger the crowd of people. Someone was coming out of the church towards him. Several women wore long dresses and scarves which surprised him a bit.
He didn't have any particular attitude about church in general. He would sometimes go in, place a candle, and stay for some of the service. As a child, his great-grandmother had him baptized and she would talk a lot about the orthodox faith. Once in the past he had gone there to pay respects to her. He heard an elderly woman loudly complaining and scolding other people, adding to the gloomy atmosphere hanging over everyone's head, spoiling the impression of his visit. He didn't want to go there ever again.
Various articles in newspapers described how there were virtually no priests who hadn't been connected to Soviet power and not worked for the KGB. That, together with The Gulag Archipelag, had put a nail in the coffin for his belief in them and the church.
* * *He was just walking, enjoying the beautiful sunny day and the birds' singing. To his surprise, he saw a priest coming his way, rather young, bearded, with long hair, looking fixedly at him. He felt ill at ease from the stare. He tried to avert his glance and sped up his step, but all of a sudden he heard the man calling him by name, "Arthur! Arthur!"
He hadn't imagined that the priest would call him by name. But when he heard him say in a singsong way, "Oh, Art," he knew the man was calling him. He had often been called 'Art' in his first years at the institute. Almost everybody had a nickname of sorts. Arthur stopped; without a doubt he was being addressed. The priest, smiling broadly and warmly, asked him, "Art, don't you recognize me?" And then, all at once he remembered, as if someone had thrown him in a cold shower.
"Zheka?" Arthur asked.
That had been our nickname for Eugene. Zheka came from the Vologda region. His father had been a manager of a large firm there and he had done everything he could to get his son into an institute of higher education in the capital. But his son wasn't very studious and was expelled for fighting and drinking in his second semester. He hadn't left a good impression of himself. Even worse, he was suspected of petty theft among his fellow students, and that had been the lowest thing to do. He wasn't caught in the act, but twice while he had been posted for security duty in the dorm some money and valuables disappeared. They weren't able to prove anything but there hadn't been anyone else on that floor.
All in all, Arthur couldn't call to mind any good impressions he had of Zheka. Looking at him now and trying to smile in return, he felt perturbed and thought to himself, "Good God! If these are the kinds of people that have now entered the church"
For a fraction of a second, images of the past came to mind. He hesitated, not wanting to have anything to do with this 'holy father', as he was mentally calling Zheka.
For a fraction of a second, images of the past came to mind. He hesitated, not wanting to have anything to do with this 'holy father', as he was mentally calling Zheka.
They exchanged pleasantries and Arthur asked, "So, how can I call you? Father Eugene, most likely?"
"Oh, come on, stop it," Eugene good-naturedly objected. "Not really, but that doesn't matter right now. I'm just glad to see you. I understand what you are thinking. I'm sure you don't have any good memories of me. I can imagine. Still, I'm glad to see you. If you'd like, we can talk. You know, I'm indebted to you. Once at a lecture you raised a very important question about the meaning of life. Your argument with the teacher deeply influenced me. It had come to my mind again when I was under fire."
Arthur didn't pick up on Zheka's 'under fire' comment. But he did remember bringing up important questions about life and arguing at lectures on philosophical points until the group's party youth leader hinted to him that if he wanted to graduate, he had better stop doing it.
It was uncomfortable to refuse a bit of conversation, but he really didn't want any. Yet something inside of him told him to agree. So, mostly out of politeness, he said, "Sure." They went into a cafe that had recently just opened and sat at a table outside. Arthur gave a quick synopsis of himself "Ahh, you know, nothing interesting," and then asked Zheka to tell him about his 'religious transformation. He began talking and Arthur pretended that he was listening, but all the time he was thinking about the end of this chit-chat with the 'holy father'. They ordered some deserts and Zheka, in his quaint Vologda accent, told his story.
The more he talked, the more intriguing he sounded. They spent about three hours talking. Arthur, after coming back home, again returned to his diary to write down (as faithfully as he could recall) what he had heard. He wanted to show it to his future children.
* * *Zheka explained that he was in Moscow only for a few days and was just passing through. He served in a small parish where there were not enough clergy. The parish membership was increasing and many new churches were opening.
He had come here for church celebrations, meetings, and training. He had a fiancée a god-fearing, honest, and faithful young woman.
After he was expelled from the institute, his resume, showing his education and work, were very poor. His own father didn't even want to help him, saying, "Go on now; serve in the army. I served; now it's your turn. So, you didn't want to study? The army will help you to learn." And even though his father could've bought his son a way out of serving at all, or set him up in a comfy job somewhere, he did nothing of the sort. He had pretty much soured on his son.
The Spring recruitment round[4] called up Zheka to serve. After his physical test, the Lieutenant-Colonel went up to Zheka and roughly addressed him, "So, you like to fight. You're a hot number, huh? What I'll tell you: let's just send you somewhere you'll get enough fighting and make good use of your talent. Do you want to be in the paratroopers? Not afraid?"
"No."
"Well, then, happy trails and God bless."
He was sent to join the Fergana paratrooper regiment in Turkistan. While they were on the train a few days later, they found out that most likely they would be sent to Afghanistan. In Fergana there was a boot camp and a regiment on active duty in Afghanistan.
Zheka had a terrible feeling about it all because both in his home town as well as in Moscow he knew a lot of people who had been wounded or killed, or who had lost someone in Afghanistan.
Newspapers weren't saying much about it, or if they did, they wrote articles of glory, and only people who could read between the lines in Soviet papers understood how badly things were going.
Chapter VI
Afghanistan
What awaited him in Fergana was an intensive boot camp,[5] where soldiers trained, studied, and prepared for about three months before being sent to Afghanistan. It was no way out of it; it was tough, not least because of the strict boot-camp instructors. Their sergeants meted out severe punishment for the slightest infraction. Soldiers and sergeants called the officers jackals because of their even higher demands. Yet their grueling discipline was fairly justified since all officers and sergeants had gone through many field operations in actual battle. They would fly in for new recruits to refresh their ranks. They knew what would wait these greenhorns.
They were trained in firearms, hand-to-hand combat, parachute jumping, a number of desert combat scenarios, and went through extreme physical training. Then they were sent for a few weeks to the mountains, where Zheka thought he would die from exhaustion. Sometimes they would hike for 2030 km. in full battle gear while still carrying on various battle engagement scenarios and shooting practice. His feet ended up looking like one big callus of blood and pus however he would try to wind socks around them. They got a half canteen of water a day.
But the real hell and torture began three months later when they were sent to Afghanistan.
* * *Arthur's notes didn't contain the exact names of all the cities or people. The only ones written down were Kabul, Kandahar, Zelenka, and most of all Bagram. On the one hand, it was easier in Afghanistan because there weren't any combat drills pulled on them in the middle of the night. On the other hand, there was continual psychological tension combined with a backdrop of steady, heavy physical labor.
The first two months they were stationed at a large base. Their part of the camp was fired on from the neighboring mountains in the first week and two from the first company died and several were injured. This was their baptism by fire and he understood it was no joke.
Zheka began praying to God with the first shots: "God protect me. Save me if you are there!" He had not expected this to be coming from him of all people. After all, he had only heard of God from his old grandmother, way back in his childhood. She hadn't really told him a lot, just general sorts of things how to pray, to cross your heart, and who Jesus Christ was.
Few months later, he got severe intestinal pains and after a couple days in the hospital, he was sent to another battalion whose duty was to maintain security over a remote region. They had to hold several high ridges in their hands, guarantee the security of various convoys, and carry out reconnaissance raids.
These were tough times in every way. Even though it was fall, it was hot and dry and it became windier every day. In November, strong sand storms kicked in and the nights became colder and colder. But the hardest thing to get used to was the heavy losses to the Soviet army. Death, injury, and missing in action were commonplace.
The mujahedeen were getting more experienced, trained by American mercenaries who provided them the most modern weapons. 'Stingers' were the most dangerous they easily shot down helicopters. Shooting on convoys or laying down punitive fire on the paratroopers' motorized brigades was now the norm, using American and captured Soviet rockets.
The hardest thing to take was that everyone understood the senselessness of the fighting and that the so-called 'international aid' was not what this country needed.
Planes returned to the USSR full of wounded or with 'load 200 , as the zinc caskets were called. When there wasn't room, the caskets sat under the hot sun for some time before take off.
Many soldiers in this battalion who had been on repeated tours of duty with only a month left to serve did whatever they could to be able to return home alive and in one piece. It was considered to be the worst thing to have served two years in this hell and to be injured or killed just before being sent home.